The Moral Implication Of Shame

Shame is one of the essential factors in human moral life. It can be contents of moral, moral emotions, or moral assessment. It’s an indispensable element for the formation of moral qualities and ideal personality.This article starts with the concept of Shame, and then elaborates the relationship between "耻" and "耻" and their usage by analyzing their character structures and meanings in Chinese. It also goes through the relevant meanings and usage of concepts like "humiliation","shyness","remorse","guilt" and "shame". On this basis, by analyzing differences and similarities between "羞耻感" and "羞耻心, it clarifies the scope for the extension of contents within this article. It’s worth mentioning that "羞耻感" and "羞耻心" are almost equivalent in general concepts and usage; in some cases they can be abbreviated into "耻感"(sense of shame). Development and accumulation of Chinese Shame Culture of in the past several thousand years has shaped the sense of shame within Chinese people. To be specific, it has been reflected by the emphasis of moral education and morality cultivation, pursuit for being vigorous and promising and for restless self-motivation, moral integrity by dying for righteousness and achieving virtue and the sense of historical missions and social responsibility for country’s rise and fall. By analyzing the evolution of the concept of Shame in western and further differentiating between shame culture and guilt culture, the article responded to the questions about theory that Ruth Benedict raised in her book 《The Chrysanthemum and Sword》Shame can be the ethical as well as non-ethical. This article mainly talks about the ethical shame. Shame has close connections with ethical concepts such as righteousness and interest, goodness and evil, conscience, obligation and dignity etc. The question about righteousness and interest is an important category in Chinese ethics, which is the core of ethical values and is directly concerning honor and shame. Similarly, it would be hard to differentiate between honor and shame if we do not consider the objectivity of goodness and evil, which also applies to honor and shame. Conscience is self-confirmation of goodness and it is the internal motivation of seeking for honor and avoiding shame. As a social species, each realistic individual human-being in complicated ethical relations, is assigned with rights and obligations and then receives corresponding assessment based on accomplishment of assigned obligations. Moral shame is an advanced social feeling of human being. It is closely associated with self-consciousness and it is the result of self-observation and self-cognition. Therefore, it directly decides the human dignity.As one of the definition items of moral, the main functionalities of shame is mainly about building up moral personality, moral norms and kindness tendency. In the scope of moral category, the start and the development of shame reflects the gradation and progress of evolution of moral ethics. Firstly, shame is the foundation of being a human-being; secondly, shame is the pre-condition of moral education, thirdly, shame is the key to make individuals to develop from self-consciousness to self-choice and then from self-choice to self-transcendence; fourthly, shame is the motivation of shaping moral personality and ideal personality; lastly, good folk customs is derived from people’s education of shame and shame is an indispensable moral factor.Ethically, Shame covers these three categories:shame in the sense of ethics contents; shame in the sense of ethics moral sentiment:shame in the sense of ethics assessment. Its main features are reflected in sociality, heteronomy and personal discipline. How shame appears certainly follows some moral psychological mechanisms. As one of the moral irrational elements, moral emotion plays an important role in causing sense of shame. The occurrence of sense of shame follows a series of mechanisms, including emotional experience, emotional sequence and emotional effects etc. At the same time, it also follows the normal mechanism of moral psychology. For example, based on the stages of conscience, sense of same develops from initiation to immaturity and then to maturity; it also develops from immoral to moral, from external discipline to self-discipline. Then, the article clarifies the internal and external influencing factors during the initiation and development process of sense of shame.The ultimate goal of analysis and demonstration upon shame is to help cultivate sense of shame and improve moral of the whole society. Speaking of that, public area and personal behavior are equally important. As for public area, cultivation of sense of shame requires an ethical environment with clear differentiation between goodness and evil, right and wrong, honor and shame. This environment must need adherence to systematic justice, because the establishment of moral sense relies on the good social custom and systematic justice. Cultivation of sense of shame also requires persistence with right value orientation, affirmation to the good and punishment to the evil. Lastly, to cultivate sense of shame in current society, we must assign with the development of the times and social environment. Civic spirit originates from civil society and it is the advanced requirement by cultivation of sense of shame. As for personal behavior, formation of sense of shame cannot be isolated from formation of general moral qualities. This article will focus on diligent study and careful reflection, introspection and inner concentration, unity of knowing and doing and accumulating goodness to be moral to elaborate the importance and the methods of personal behavior.